Grey Street
by Kateko
Summary: Songfic to Dave Matthews' Grey Street. DemyxNamine.


A/N: This song has always inspired me. This pairing isn't even one that I particularly like, but I thought it would be fun to write

Disclaimer: I own nothing. It's all Square and Dave Matthews.

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Namine sat in the corner of her room, drawing again. She was the only one living in Castle Oblivion who wasn't really a part of Organization XIII - yet as a nobody, she never really felt out of place. She loved to hear stories of the places that everyone else visited, whether they were on a mission or just patrolling.

Demyx, Axel, and Roxas always told the most interesting stories. They were the most inclined to talk to her, which she supposed was a large part of why she loved listening to them so much. Demyx's stories were generally the least exciting - he avoided fights - but he was so funny, so full of energy, that his were the ones she looked forward to the most.

"You should have seen the _trees _there, Namine," he was telling her now as she listened intently. His face lit up at the memory of them. "They were all sorts of weird colors, and they must have been four stories tall!"

"I wish I could have seen them," Namine agreed. It was how she always responded. She never left the castle - not allowed to. She couldn't fight - she was no warrior like Larxene - and wasn't a member of the Organization, so she was never sent to these exciting, foreign lands.

_"Oh, look at how she listens,_

_She says nothing of what she thinks_

_She just goes stumbling through her memories_

_Staring out onto Grey Street"_

Not in real life, anyway.

"They were huge, and they had these giant, star-shaped leaves," Demyx continued excitedly. "They were in every color you could imagine. Red, purple, green..."

Namine smiled and her hand flew across the paper as she listened, sketching out these trees he described. This was how it happened every time that she heard about these adventures. She would draw these lands, nothing more than a fantasy to her. In the middle of the drawings was always a drawing of herself, along with whoever's story had inspired her. This was how she travelled. She would never make it out of the castle, but in her drawings and in her dreams...she could go anywhere.

_"She thinks, 'Hey,'  
'How did I come to this?'  
'I dream myself a thousand times around the world'_

_But I can't get out of this place.'"_

In this drawing, she was holding one of the giant leaves. It was a bright pink, with a red stem. Just like the tree next to her, covered in the same pink leaves. She was smiling - she was always smiling when she got to visit these wonderful dream lands.

The _real _Namine didn't smile, though. It wasn't that she _never _smiled - but her smiles were never the truly happy smiles that her drawings showed. She smiled politely, gently. Demyx always spent a lot of time trying to get her to laugh, but she never did.

She'd tried drawing herself happy in the castle, once, genuinely happy. Just to see if she could do it. But for some reason, it wouldn't come out right. She kept making mistakes, erasing every line over and over again. In the end, she'd made so many mistakes that the eraser had torn through the paper and the colors were all smudged, grey blobs.

_"There's an emptiness inside her_

_And she'd do anything to fill it in_

_But all the colors mix together - to grey_

_And it breaks her heart."_

She began drawing the tree next to where Demyx would be standing. She couldn't draw Demyx until last; he always took her too long to get just right. He had so many details to him, and Namine couldn't bring herself to eliminate any of them. And his smile...his smile was too perfect for her to ruin. Yes, Demyx had to be drawn last. He had to be perfect.

She wished she could be like that - she wished she could be hard to draw. But she was always the same. Day in and day out she stayed in the castle, drawing what she wished could be true. She never changed, even her emotions stayed the same. And her goals. Every night she hoped against hope that something would change. She knew nothing would change. After all, she would never become a fighter, and would never become a member of the Organization - but there was a tiny spark of hope in her heart that somehow, it would.

_"How she wishes it was different_

_She prays to God most every night_

_And though she swears it never listens_

_There's still a hope in her it might."_

Looking up at Demyx, still deep in his story, Namine felt a twinge of hopelessness. Was this what her entire life was going to be? Dreams of things that would never happen? Would there ever be anything new?

No...not if things continued this way. But nobody around her was going to help her, were they? What could they do?

It was then realization dawned on her. They couldn't do _anything _to help her. _She _had to help her.

_"She says, 'I pray,_

_But it falls on deaf ears._

_Am I supposed to take it on myself_

_To get out of this place?'"_

But what did she want? She shaded in the trunk of the tree, still listening to Demyx as she thought. Her hand never stopped moving.

She needed to see something new, something exciting. She wanted a change of scenery, a change of pace...

She wanted _change._

_"There's an emptiness inside her_

_And she'd do anything to fill it in_

_And though it's red blood bleeding from her now_

_It feels like cold blue ice in her heart_

_When all the colors mix together- to grey_

_And it breaks her heart."_

"...and that's all," Demyx said finally.

Namine smiled her small, gentle smile. "Thank you, Demyx."

Demyx leaned over to peek at her paper. "Are you done?"

"No," Namine shook her head. "I'll show you when I am, though."

"You got it," Demyx agreed, standing up again and looking at all the sketches taped to her walls. She was in every world he'd visited lately, every world Axel had visited, as well as Roxas, and even a few of the other members. "You really do like hearing about our missions, don't you?" he asked.

Namine nodded. "It's as close as I can get to being there."

An emotion crossed Demyx's eyes, and she couldn't catch it. Pity? "Well, I'll see you around," he said after a pause, walking out of the room. He grabbed the door to close it, but he paused.

"Namine..." he began uncertainly. Namine looked up at him, but he wasn't facing her. He was still turned away. "You can't live like this forever. You have to go after what you want, Namine. Make those drawings a reality. We can't do it for you. You have to do it yourself."

_"There's a stranger speaks outside her door_

_Says, 'Take what you can from your dreams  
Make them as real as anything_

_It'd take the work out of courage.'"_

Namine sighed, casting her gaze down. "I...don't know what you mean," she lied, trying to avoid the conversation. She didn't like when other people knew her better than she did, and she hated conversations about her feelings when she wasn't ready for them.

_"She says, 'Please,_

_There's a crazy man that's creeping outside my door_

_I live on the corner of Grey Street_

_And at the end of the world.'"_

She looked down at the paper again, choosing to add a bit of detail to her own face. She was smiling brightly and holding a leaf out, but...where was she looking? "Well, where would I be looking?" she asked herself.

At Demyx. She drew in her eyes, looking happily at Demyx. She'd be looking at Demyx, because she'd be happy to be spending time with him somewhere so incredible. He'd probably be saying something funny. She'd have to remember to draw him talking.

So was she happy because she was somewhere so exciting? Or was she happy because she was with Demyx?

The question caught her by surprise, even though she'd been the one to ask it.

What would_ really _make her happy?

_There's an emptiness inside her_

_And she'd do anything to fill it in_

_And though it's red blood bleeding from her now_

_It's more like cold blue ice in her heart_

It was the first time the thought had occurred to her, but now it was quickly evolving into an epiphany. She stood and looked up at her drawings on her walls. In the drawings with Demyx, she was smiling up at him. Sometimes she was laughing. She was always looking at him. In her drawings with anyone else...she was looking at the landscape around her, at her surroundings.

She glanced at a drawing of her in the mountains. She was standing next to Xigbar. No. It was Xaldin. She'd had trouble figuring it out at first. All the blacks blended together.

"I didn't put very much detail into it," she whispered to herself. She looked down at a drawing of she and Demyx in a jungle, a volcano in the background, just as he'd described it. The trees didn't look as nice as they did in a drawing of she and Roxas, but Demyx...Demyx's trenchcoat had more detail than any other trenchcoat on that wall.

"That's because I focus on what I care about most..." the realization struck her as she sat down again.

That was what she wanted. _Who _she wanted. That was what she wished would change.

"We can't do it for you. You have to do it yourself." Demyx's words rang in her ears.

She leaned back over her sketchpad, finishing the background so she could get to work on Demyx. The place seemed even more beautiful to her now that she had come to realize what she was feeling. She used the brightest colors she could, the happiest pencils in her box.

Once she finished the drawing, she told herself, she would work on making her drawings real. She would go after the freedom she really dreamed of.

_"She feels like kicking out all the windows_

_And setting fire to this life_

_She could change everything about her_

_Using colors bold and bright"_

Everything seemed the same, now. Everything was still the same.

But it wouldn't be for long, she swore as her hand flew furiously about the paper.

_"But all the colors mix together- to grey_

_And it breaks her heart_

_It breaks her heart_

_To grey."_

_Demyx set down the sitar and looked at Namine. "What did you think?"_

_Namine smiled. "I liked it. A lot."_

_"It was about you," Demyx told her. _

_She nodded. "I know. I figured." She looked into the bag she was carrying. "That reminds me, I finished the drawing. The one from the forest with the trees you liked." She pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Demyx._

_Demyx examined it. "It's great, just like all your drawings...but one thing confuses me."_

_Namine stood up and peeked at the paper to see what he would say. "Yes?"_

_"Well, you're holding a pink leaf, and the tree next to you is pink. But the tree next to me is blue, and the leaf _I'm _holding is yellow."_

_Namine smiled to herself. In Demyx's hand was a yellow star. "That's not a leaf," she explained._

_"What is it, then?" Demyx asked, sounding even more perplexed now._

_Namine looked up at him, her small smile still there. "Guess." _

_Demyx tilted his head to the side. "Well, it looks like those things Roxas mentioned once. Those paopu fruit."_

_"And do you remember what they do?" Namine asked._

_"If two people share them, then their destines are intertwined forever," Demyx said slowly, straining to remember._

_"But they only work if the people are..?" _

_  
Demyx opened his mouth to say it, but realized the signifigance before the words escaped his mouth. _

_The confusion disappeared from his face, replaced with shocked realization. Yet in a moment that, too, faded, and he smiled. He leaned down as Namine looked up at him hopefully, and their lips met. _

_Demyx stood up straight again, pulling back from the kiss. "In love," he answered her. _

_Namine smiled. And for the first time in as long as she could remember, it was a genuine, heartfelt smile._

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A/N: Er, I hope it wasn't confusing that the italics were actually to designate what happened _after _she finished the drawing, or that Demyx was the one singing the song. (Demyx Dave Matthews? Weird stuff!)

But yeah, this is an unusual couple for me. Usually I'm more Roxas/Namine and Demyx/Zexion. Even though I prefer Axel/Roxas over Roxas/Namine...sigh I've been wanting to write something about this song for a while, though, so this was my chance!


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